What are the benefits of the Asset Exchange.. I sort of see it but would like to hear more. It's basically the same as Bitcoin's colored coins concept, right?

Or will it be somewhat "Dark Market" like?

This is a bit of a pet topic for me

The term "Asset Exchange" is a bit unfortunate as it leads people to think that it is just about being an Exchange, where you can do IPO's and trade things.

However, the "coloured coins" concept is what it is.

So: It cóuld be used for a Dark Market, if people develop one.By the same token, it could be used for "trading" or "exchanging" anything at all that can be linked to a Nxt token.

As such, the only thing that is truly important is the exchanging part and the assigning of arbitrary attributes to a coin.So it can be used for anything from making a Dark Market, as well as playing Monetised Scrabble with it by exchanging coins that represent letters.

This is why I myself am relatively vocal in nót marketing the AE to consumers, but rather developers who will build applications that úse the Asset Exchange.Just shoving Assets around is the most simple way to use it, but the "trading" of these Assets in a creative way is a much more interesting way to use it.

As a seller of some type of "goods", I could register an alias that points to a .onion site. On this site I could list my "assets" that would be available on AE. I could then communicate with my customers through the messaging feature (although I can't recall if messaging is private in its current state). Easy Peazy.. I would be surprised if someone does not try to attempt this.

Yes, to me the exciting thing here is that unlike major exchanges, the NXT AE will be up 24/7. I wonder how this will affect the stock market in the long run.

Very interesting point.. bet lots of people will have alarms to wake them in the middle of the night if things plummet. Might also be slightly more cautious or sleep in fiat/Nxt sometimes. I see it being similar to trading cryptos though. Though it'd also be easy enough to add an option that allows companies to freeze their stock overnight if for some reason wanted.

As a seller of some type of "goods", I could register an alias that points to a .onion site. On this site I could list my "assets" that would be available on AE. I could then communicate with my customers through the messaging feature (although I can't recall if messaging is private in its current state). Easy Peazy.. I would be surprised if someone does not try to attempt this.

Yeah, that's true and messaging can be private if you encrypt it before/after sending.

Personally I think that a Dark Market type business started before cryptos get significantly larger would be a very bad idea. I think the public would see it as shady and we should keep cryptos far away from it for the time being. I guess all you need is one person who decides to implement it though.

This is why I myself am relatively vocal in nót marketing the AE to consumers, but rather developers who will build applications that úse the Asset Exchange.Just shoving Assets around is the most simple way to use it, but the "trading" of these Assets in a creative way is a much more interesting way to use it.

Interesting idea.. I think in general we need to be in the attracting developers more than consumers phase.. then when prices go up all the developers are rich, they can quit their jobs and focus full-time on making Nxt even more awesome

About all sorts of darks markets.. Those are definately something that nobody wants. I would see that catching all kinds of illegal activities will become easier to spot rather than easier to hide with this kind of technology.. and most of those kind of activities still would have to take place in a real world were the pattern of the suspected criminal can be verified.